


See you in Hell

by Trash



Category: Linkin Park
Genre: Drug Abuse, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-23
Updated: 2014-01-23
Packaged: 2018-01-09 18:40:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1149454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trash/pseuds/Trash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The way nothing says ‘I love you’ like a dozen dead roses, late valentines and forgotten birthdays - nothing says ‘I hate you’ like joining the army.</p>
            </blockquote>





	See you in Hell

The way nothing says ‘I love you’ like a dozen dead roses, late valentines and forgotten birthdays - nothing says ‘I hate you’ like joining the army.

Not even eighteen he moved in with his boyfriend for who-the-fuck-knows-why and other reasons that probably made sense at the time. He should have seen this coming, really. Everyone had warned him. In hind sight, he probably should have paid attention.

He was sitting on Brad’s bathroom floor sucking the fumes out of the bottom of a shaving-foam can when he tells him. He looks up and holds the can out for his friend to take and says, “I’m moving in with Chester.”

“How much of this shit have you done, dude?”

Mike rolled his eyes and lay back on the linoleum, the cool tiles sending a shiver down his bare back, “I’m being serious. He asked if I wanted to. And I figured, you know, why not?”

“Would you like a list of reasons why this is a dumb ass idea?”

He didn’t, but he let Brad blabber on anyway. For a good twenty minutes he bitched about how Chester was just a suicide waiting to happen, and about how he obviously has no plans to go to college. Which probably means he has no future.

And Mike says, so what? Maybe I’m his future.

And Brad, he just huffed more fumes and laughed.

***

Mike had thought Brad was jealous; after all, he was the one who still had to live with his parents until he got into college. But Mike was breaking away. Mike was moving forward.

Forward, backwards, standing still. It’s all the same fucking thing.

They’ve only been living together a few weeks when Mike comes home from school to find Chester in front of the TV. “Why aren’t you at work?” He asks, dumping his bag in the hallway and shuffling through into the living room.

“I quit.”

Mike blinks incredulously, “Okay…” he sits down beside his boyfriend and raises an eyebrow, “So what are we going to do for money?”

Chester shrugs.

“Rent is due next week, Ches’. Do you even have enough money for that?”

“Yeah!” The older man snaps, “Of course I do. Only, I owe my dealer like, fifty bucks.” He looks at Mike questioningly.

“What do you want me to do about that?”

“Well last time I checked, you smoked half of what I bought. I’m not the only one getting high around here.”

Mike can’t believe his ears, “How am I meant to get fifty bucks?”

“You could always get a job, you little brat.” Chester hisses, getting up and disappearing out into the hallway. In the distance the bedroom door slams shut and Mike collapses to lie down on the couch with an exhausted sigh.

***

The only place that is willing to employ him is a shady bar where he is paid minimal wage and treat with minimal respect, hit on by guys with minimal antiperspirant, and given minimal time off. More than once he’d had to cut school to work, and less and less he was able to see his dreams of art school playing out in the near future.

Chester sat at home everyday whilst Mike was at school. He’d come home to find his uniform washed and ironed, then he’d run into town to start work an hour later. When he came home the older man was either drunk, or high. Either way, by three in the morning Mike was too tired to give a damn.

He slept on the couch, now, since all Chester ever wanted to do was fuck. Which Mike wouldn’t have complained about usually. But nine to five at school then six to three at work was killing him.

More than once he had fallen asleep in a lesson and had Brad swatting at his arm to wake him up. But the hours were the only way to pay the rent, phone bill, gas and electricity bill as well as feed Chester’s drug habit.

“You look like shit, man.”

“Yeah,” Mike murmured, wiping drool from his cheek and sitting up straight in his seat, “I’m aware of that.”

“Why not just move back in with your folks?”

Mike shrugs and doesn’t tell Brad that they were so pissed about him moving in with Chester that they said he wasn’t welcome in their house ever again. He doesn’t tell Brad that he’s fucked every which way now. He doesn’t tell him he’s lost.

He just shrugs, and stares at his notebook.

***

It’s his eighteenth birthday.

Chester has no idea.

He gets up and pads down the hall, heading out to collect the mail. On top is a letter with a big US Army stamp on the front. He tears it open and, at first, raises an eyebrow at the information pack about recruitment.

As he enters the kitchen he almost throws it in the trash. But he figures, what does he have here?

What does he have left?

And besides, nothing says ‘I hate you’ like joining the army.

***

He sits exams instead of going to school. He takes online tests, fills in forms and mails them off.

For months he’s pretty sure nothing has happened. And he gets through his week by smoking through Chester’s stash, then crawling into bed with the man he was sure he loved and rolls onto his back, pulling Chester on top of him. The kiss they share speaks of love, future, and a whole load of other lies.

Then one day he gets a phone call. He doesn’t explain to Chester, and he leaves through the night. He leaves a note on the counter, along with a dead rose that he got a week after his birthday when Chester finally remembered but couldn’t afford anything that was alive.

The note reads:

Gone to Iraq. Or whatever.  
See you in Hell.  
-M.


End file.
